blogging

I always wanted a Mongoose BMX bike. But Mongoose bikes were hard to come by – at least for a rural kid growing up in Southern Ontario. A Mongoose was relatively expensive. I couldn’t justify a Mongoose. Instead I rolled through my young life on CCMs and Supercycles (Sears store brand). Adequate and honest bikes …

Well I think I made it over two years with the same self-designed blog theme. But alas, it was starting to feel clunky and somewhat rusty to me. That, and the fact that it displayed the odd quirk (likely due to my amateurish wordpress theming skills). I’m no spring chicken, and as such I’ve got …

The recent Smashing Magazine post “Designers, ‘Hacks’ and Professionalism: Are We Our Own Worst Enemy?” is an interesting one. I urge you to read it. It brings up several different issues but one that struck a chord with me was the whole feeling about the commoditization of design. With sites like 99designs.com which leverage design …

Two parts to this, not nearly as tied together as I’d like, but heck, it’s been a month. First it’s pretend time, then a few things to ponder. Okay, pretend time. Let’s pretend that you and I are designing a new Linux-based distro. So being good designers means that we’re going to immediately try to …

Are you creating something? Maybe it’s a blog post like this one. Maybe it’s a logo, or a desktop wallpaper. Are you writing a piece of software? Maybe you’re helping to create the next great Linux distro (HA!). Maybe you’re busy crafting an email to a prospective client or developing your own video podcast. Heck, …

Well this is a first. I’m actually composing this post on a laptop. Yes indeedy, the first laptop I’ve ever owned. Since this is my first, I won’t pretend to know all about them and give you a 5 page in-depth technical review. Instead I’ll just give a hopefully quick run-down and then get back …

It was a little less than a year ago that I first struggled through creating a WordPress theme from scratch for my blog. And now I spent about two or three evenings coming up with another one. This time it really is a clean and simple theme. Almost barren in fact. I’m not sure if …

Ever since this post on September 1st, it seems Merlin Mann and his 43Folders have really decided to get their shit together. It’s pretty inspiring stuff which is distinctly different than something like Lifehacker which, to my mind, seems to be heavily diluted lately in the interest of growth and at the expense of value. …

About a week ago, one of our faithful screencast viewers zombiebrainz had a great idea and created a Flickr group as a place for people to post their inkscape work. This was done so that people could show off what they were working on with or without the help of our screencasts. It’s turning out …